Telemachy
by LexLuthor13
Summary: The Age of Superheroes is dying. Tim Drake can feel it. And he intends to face it head-on. Bravely. Strongly. But if he's so strong, why is he so afraid? And what of the Batman? What of his criminal enemies, dying one by one?
1. The End Days

_**"The end days were upon us, Allen..."**_

* * *

I saw my father die.

Can you imagine? You run up the steps and you see him there and you think-

Well. Lots of things.

More precisely, I sat there, his head in my arms, looking at his corpse. In my memory, he clung to life a bit longer, his eyes hung open for a second before he went. So he got a good look at me. Even though I'm sure it didn't happen that way.

I didn't even get to watch him die. That would've been something else. Watching him run out. Watching time run out. For him. For me. For all of us.

All the clichés.

I just. Ran up the stairs and there he was.

Already gone.

And I guess I could be pretty angry about what happened to him. You know, some no-account kills your dad with a boomerang, it kind of kills your spirit.

I had spent some time prior to his death wondering how much longer I could keep this going. How much longer I could keep living the life I had. There were so many transitory things in those days. In my life. As it turned out, life floated on a dime. Things changed. And in a very short time I found myself living a different life. Like an out of body experience: who was this skinny kid in the Robin suit, and why was he so unhappy at his lot?

As it turned out, I'm not sure it was ever my life to begin with.

And I am writing this to figure out why.

I had this friend once. Maybe you know him. Brilliant kid. A journalist by heart and now by occupation. He would say he didn't understand people, but I disagree. He knew damn well. Knew his way in and out of people, except for one. Knew what he wanted. And how to get it. He was an investigator. You know. A digger. We met on a whim, a cosmic anomaly of crossroads. Years ago at a Knights game, his seat a row ahead of mine, our dads comparing stats in their programmes, he and I sneaking around the park at Seventh Inning to experience the grass and the box seats, the high and the low.

Later, back in reality, we stayed in touch. He was in Metropolis, I was in Gotham. We were a couple of over-intellectual teenagers. Inflated egos and diminishing returns guiding our lives. But. You know. That was then. Allen and I grew apart, the way people do. As it turns out we both found our way to sterner shores and authority figures. But. Oh those Knights games. Oh those days. The golden days, the good old days-

I've been reading these articles Olsen puts in the Living section of the _Daily Planet._ Depressive and imaginative, they talk about those old days.

The good old days. So he says. The good old days.

Not so long ago.

We used to have heroes.

My name is Tim Drake.

If you're reading this it means I succeeded in sending it. And it means I am also most definitely dead. And Gotham with me. Don't worry, I'll tell you how.

I'll give it to you in three sentences or less.

One. I was thirteen when I saw John and Mary Grayson die. Two. I spent a year tracking down their only living son, so I could become like him and in so doing save the Batman from himself. Three.

Three.

Three is I failed.

Miserably.

So if you're reading this, Allen, you have to know why. You deserve to know why. Who. What. Where. When.

How.

All your Journalism questions.

One thing.

Wherever we go from here, Allen, we go together. I was not the best friend a man could ask for. As it turns out I was pretty piss poor. I should've helped you when you asked for it. I cannot apologize enough for that. I can't turn back time. But I can offer you a chance, and I hope you take it.

A chance to learn or maybe just see why that age of heroes started dying in Gotham City. Why we couldn't save it. Or ourselves.

Allen.

I'm so sorry for this. But. If we're being honest, then the masks are off. Effective immediately.

First one is the easiest. My real name is Timothy Jackson Drake. But I'm actually called Robin. The Teen Wonder. You knew this years ago at the LexTower. And since you knew it then you've probably pieced the rest together too. Including this:

Batman.

I knew what you thought. I knew where your feelings were on the subject. I knew where you stood. But it was my choice. And his.

Even becoming Batman was a choice. His choice. Even if it was the only one he could make at the time he made it. Even if you get to a point, far out there, where reality is unreal and the rules aren't rules anymore, they're shackles, and the only choice anyone has is no choice at all.

He didn't have a choice. I don't know why I'm defending him but I am.

I am. Because. He's my father. The father I never had.

First difficult truth out of the way. The next one.

Batman is Bruce Wayne.

And. You know. Given your relationship to a certain Metropolis Mogul, I think you might already know.

One more thing. The fact that you're reading this also means I am truly desperate to have sent it to you, Allen. The fact that I did means-

Well.

That they're probably all dead too. People I'd trust with my life, before I'd trust you, any day of the week. Dick Grayson. Barbara Gordon. Even Harvey Bullock. Yeah figure that one out, you met Bullock once, remember?

Anyway.

I remember Olsen.

Not so long ago.

We had heroes.

And if you want to know why we don't? Keep going, Allen. And if not, then. Then.

Then in five minutes if you don't type in your full name, the command line in this program will wipe this document and all data on this computer till there's nothing left but a blue screen of death. It's not quite MS-DOS, but it's very nearly the Stone Age. Getting up there, getting up there.

I can't say I trust you to do the right thing, Allen, because that doesn't exist anymore. And because I needed to put this out there. I need to write this. Before they come for me. Or I disappear and one day you try looking for me and-

Never mind. The only thing I could ask, and it would speak only from my heart, would be this:

Once you're done with this, do something with it. Make it something. Make yourself something. Change the world. Change our world. Earn this, Allen. Earn it. I'm begging you.

Life is a gift.

So here it is.

The end days were upon us, Allen. We didn't know it. No one ever does.

You know. People are unknowable.

And because of that, there are a few variations on when it all started. Bart disagrees with me but here's what we came up with. The proverbial Here's How. It happened when:

When Harvey Dent sent Gotham's last crime boss to the Schreck, in the process becoming the city's final boss.

When Thomas Elliot returned with a rotting face, determined more than ever to erase Bruce from history.

When the Demon's Head beheld Algol in the East and wiped Bialya from the face of this earth.

When Edward Nigma got his second terminal cancer diagnosis, and on his deathbed would only speak to Bruce.

Personally? I think it started when a sick man named Jervis Tetch killed Barbara Gordon.

But.

You know.

I could be wrong.

* * *

**_Continued..._**


	2. The Life You Were Going to Have

_**"Tell me about the life you were going to have..."**_

* * *

**Edward Climbs The Wall.**

Edward Nigma died on a Tuesday.

He'd been sick for some time. He'd even beaten cancer once before, after a fashion: the life-giving properties of the Lazarus Pits cured him of the tumor pressing on his cerebellum. But they also drove him insane. Crazier than usual. And in the throes of the worst insanity of his life, he figured out who Bruce Wayne was.

It was then that Thomas Elliot walked into his life having known the same thing.

Naturally they became friends. And set to destroy Bruce.

And then, during a super-criminal raid on Metropolis, Edward'd had his clock cleaned with a mace to the head. He spent the year in a coma and promptly forgot Batman.

Until.

Now.

Standardized case history painted Nigma's particular behavior as obsessive compulsive, a high functioning sociopath with zero understanding of his fellow man, a crippling complexity addiction; occasional demonstrations of a borderline personality disorder. The genius was in there, somewhere, but buried under pathos and symbolism and childish need. Clinically, Nigma varied from, say, the Joker's accepted psychological makeup, which presented more aggressively.

And because of-

Or in spite of these things-

He was no murderer.

Which meant that when it broke he was dying, the responses were different. There were no picket lines outside the Metropolitan Hospital, Thomas Wayne's first residency by the way, calling for justice for his victims. No protestors, and no talking heads on GCN or WLEX talking about a career criminal, a deviant, who deserved this last bit of punishment the universe had to offer. No judgement. No scorn. And no pity, either. Imagine that.

He was just an ill man at the end of his time. For some reason it resonated. People noticed.

And when he finally died, they stopped what they were doing and were very silent.

A mighty tree had fallen.

Bruce went to see him. Not as Batman, either.

In a rich brown houndstooth, in calfskin leather gloves, a tweed suit, Schonenfeld's finest for a harsh November day, the wind barreling down Moldoff and making you hug yourself so tight to protect from the elements that you thought you'd implode. Bruce Wayne strolled into the Metropole, head high and proud despite the circumstances. Asked the desk nurse in an easy, hypnotic voice where Edward Nigma's room was and she said forty forty eight, and up the great glass elevator he went. Around the corner from the elevator bank and through the ward. Forty forty eight was at the end of the hall, facing the exterior wall made of glass and staring out at Snyder Park.

Wayne pushed the door open gently. Shut it behind him as gently. And looked at Nigma.

He looked contorted and corpuscular. A skeleton lying under starched sheets, tubes and wires going in and out of him. An aquiline nose almost all that was left of his face, the rest all sunken and blanched.

Wayne frowned. His heart sunk.

He's lost so much weight, Wayne thought. He was never a bruiser, but he was healthy. This.

This is-

He noticed Nigma's arms, laying on top of the covers, strained and sagging and bony spindles for hands, and. And-

I can see his joints.

"Oh," he said. "Edward."

Nigma was sleeping. His face sort of molded into place. Frowning or grimacing. If he was in pain he was-

His eyes opened slowly and he focused on the room and on Wayne. Slowly. Dementedly. His head bobbled on his neck. Wayne knew the movements well. Struggling to stay awake.

"Ah," Edward said. Hardly any air behind it. But he heard it all the same. "Bruce Wayne."

Then Nigma smiled a bit. Weakly, sadly, thin lines in his face drawing it up at great effort. He was so old and so tired and so-

"I knew you'd come," he said. "I just knew it."

"You asked for me. Here I am."

Nigma relaxed and looked at the ceiling.

"I remembered," Nigma said. "Who you were. Years afterward, you know. Blunt force trauma...you know. Not a long term cure. Much the same you could say for my current predicament."

"Why not use the Pits this time?"

"You know the answer to that," he said and it was hardly a whisper. "You know the whole story."

"They cured you once before."

"And I started vomiting blood last year anyway." He looked out the window and made a face. Bitterly he said, "Look at me now."

"Edward."

"They've got this...tube feed in my stomach. Giving what's left of my stomach nutrients it can't even..."

Wayne frowned.

"My organs are. Failing. You're talking to morphine."

He brought a hand up and covered his face. Cried. Shivered and sighed and said, "oh damn."

Out of nowhere an idea came to Bruce. He'd had it years before and dismissed it. When Tommy cut out Selina's heart, Michael Holt had commented on the technology Elliot had used to keep her alive. Victor Fries could save Nigma. Luthor could. If he would. If the Batman strolled into LexCorp-

"I know people who could help."

"Ffh."

Wayne was silent. Then he said, "What?"

Nigma spoke up. "What do you do, Bruce. When. When you're closer to this line. Than to that one."

"You," Wayne said. "Don't stop fighting."

Nigma chuckled, and it turned into a sick, wet gurgle. "The kids..."

"What?"

"The kids!"

"Edward."

"Your boys. What of them."

"They'll find a way. They always have."

Nigma frowned. Creases in his face went deeper, the skin sagged. "I hope so. I hope they're not wasting their lives. For you."

Wayne made a face. Then he thought better of himself and said, "I...don't think they are."

Nigma scoffed. Half turned in the bed and looked out the window. Far below, the Sprang River twisting through town, hedgerows and trees flanking it on either shore, Snyder Park on the far side, the Opera shell there just waiting for the Summer Arts Series to come round again. If it ever could, if it ever did, who could say, who knows. Who. Knows.

He was decaying so fast. Sentences down to syllables. "I have. Ow. Hours. Left."

"I know."

"...You do know. Don't you."

"Yes."

He sniffed. Once. Quickly. "Will you stay with me?"

Wayne looked at him. Nodded.

Pulled a chair up to the bedside and sat. He looked at Nigma's heart monitor, his stats, gave the IV bag a quick visual check. Blood pressure might as well have been zero over zero, the beats of his heart few and far between.

Then he looked at Nigma, lying there near the end and dying and terrified. And said, "You know, I actually enjoyed the Englehart Trap."

"The electric. Water tank?"

Wayne nodded.

"My greatest hit."

"And the jumpsuit. That domino mask-"

"Hh." Nigma chuckled. "A simpler time. What was I thinking?"

"I envied you," Wayne said. "That magnificent brain and you used it for your own ends."

Nigma looked at him. Frowned. "You wish you could be selfish," he croaked. "Well enough you can't. You'd be as crazy as. Crazy as us."

"You're not like the rest."

"I know. But you. Stacked deck. All the crazies. And you still beat them all."

Wayne hesitated. "There was a price we paid."

Nigma looked at him.

Wayne looked right back.

Nigma asked if it was worth paying.

Wayne thought about it all too briefly, all too rashly. Of course. Every day and every night for years. For an eternity. Sarah and Jim and Jason and Selina. And Tommy, poor wayward Tommy.

And two good people named Thomas and Martha. Taken from him by chance and by stupidity.

Yes he thought about them. Every minute of every day. Since. Since the beginning. Eight years old in an alley in Park Row. Since the source.

Of everything Bruce Wayne was, and everything he would be.

Slowly, peacefully-

"Yes it was worth it. It still is."

Nigma smiled and relaxed.

"Then you answered the riddle."

Nigma closed his eyes. His breathing slowed.

"Edward."

"The riddle," Nigma said. "Of your life. The only one worth solving."

Wayne frowned.

"What," Nigma said. Closed his eyes and spoke slower. "My father. Broke my legs once. Your father. Fixed me. The good man."

Wayne waited a moment. Then:

"Yes," he said. "My father."

Nigma chuckled again. That flat, wet gurgle. "Tell me about your family, Bruce."

Wayne raised an eye.

"Tell me about the life...you were going to have."

And Wayne did. To his credit. Without malice or fear, without regret. He honored this poor dying man's last request. He told him the highlights. The good times.

He told him of Thomas Wayne and his first residency, in this very hospital. Of summers spent funding the Arts Series in the park. Of winters in Metropolis, sighting the Icicle and Alan Scott, of mischief with Tommy, of meeting a little Lutheran named Clark Kent on a cross country trip. Of the loves of his life: Silver and Julie, Vicki and Vesper. Of the Wayne Foundation Arbitrary Scholarship every summer for the company intern that happened to be in the right place at the right time. Of the idea he had to turn the Manor, on the occasion of his death, into a home for wayward youth. Of the Justice League of America and the true friends there. Clark and Diana and Arthur and Wally.

Of three brave boys he had the honor to call sons.

And of Edward Nigma. The last criminal the Batman respected.

They talked into the evening. Even as Nigma's strength faded to nothing. Even as the nurses came in-

He stayed with him until his time came.

And when it had come and gone, he stood and put his hand on Edward Nigma's dead shoulder and patted it. Not cruel or cowardly, not forceful or rude. You did well, Edward. You're gonna be just fine. I believe in that and I believe in you.

He sat there even as Doctor Tsongas pronounced the time of death. As the orderlies wheeled the body out and down to the morgue. Then. Alone in the room, staring out the window, Nurse Rigorelli changing the sheets out behind him.

I hope, Nigma had said. They're not wasting their lives. For you.

Father.

How do I do it?

How do I make them. Not like me.

I don't know who's right, Father. I don't have the answers. I don't know if it's Clark. Or Wally or Hal or you or Alfred or Orion, I don't know.

I haven't...not known...in years.

I've stagnated, Father. I've planted myself while the world changed. While they changed. Doing what I've always done.

Oh damn.

I made a vow to you. Both of you.

I swore I would rid this city of the evil that took your lives. The evil that infests it.

Tonight I saw that fear. More clearly than ever before.

With Nigma, of all people.

I don't know how to live. But I don't want to die.

All the sudden I'm eight years old again. Staring at you. Watching time run out.

I'm afraid of vulnerability. I'm afraid I may have to die.

I fear there may be no other choice.

Father.

"Help me."

Sometimes, Tommy had said to him, years ago, happier days gone by, sometimes...there are no answers.

He remembered.

And of course it was all so mechanical. Real human interaction did not number among the talents of either Bruce or Tommy. Growing up the way they had, you were expected to behave better than the rest. The Wayne fortune was expected to create Thomas Wayne's kind of social responsibility. No fast cars or fast women. No frivolity. Only seriousness. And Bruce was expected to carry this forward, beyond his parents generation. To use his wealth and his responsibility, his social chair, to improve Gotham.

He failed. As grossly as Tommy had in his appropriation of the ancient Elliot money.

They failed together.

Gotham was no better off for Bruce's efforts. It was this that kept him up at night. His own worth.

What his city could look like.

Without a Batman.

He imagined his father. In the room with him, his face as permanently stone and focused in death as in life.

Bruce your assumptions are facile. You know what it is to be a man. Your wealth and your status mean nothing without the honorable behavior to substantiate it.

Honor.

He thought of Tommy. His partnership with Nigma, on the occasion of discovering the Batman's true identity.

Why he had been so damaged over what Tommy did. Masquerading Basil Karlo as Jason. Bribing Crane to profile the Batman's enemies. Even though it's been years. Even though no one's really left to care.

He thought of his old crew team at Princeton. What would Old Rike, his eighth, think of this.

Wayne you old so and so. Gentlemen of Princeton do not kill their parents for the insurance money. And they certainly don't scramble about Gotham's rooftops in search of pyhrric victory.

Tommy.

Bruce, there's been an accident. My mom and dad.

Tommy, I'm sorry.

You swore!

Yes. Yes he swore.

And he thought, here, now, in this moment.

The Batman. Always over-delivering. Always saying too much. Even as Bruce Wayne. Even as a child.

It was almost a superpower. Almost.

Sad old man. Like Nigma. Like.

Tommy.

Tommy there's been an accident. My parents.

Bruce I'm sorry I wish I could be there but Mother you know...

Yes. Yes I understand.

And he had understood all too well. The burden of responsibility. The value of maturity. Thomas Wayne's values. As he lived and died.

And now here was Wayne. Decades past that boy grieving silently over his parents. Decades past the angry, beleaguered Thomas Elliot.

Here. Now. In this place.

Bruce Wayne looked into the night sky. Striated clouds chopping into the bottom half of the moon. A cold breeze flowing through him from nowhere.

And then he was gone. Out of the hospital room. Through the ward and to the great glass elevator. Down past the Sundollers in the lobby. Out to the Elise, far across the parking lot.

And home.

Home.

To his father's house.

* * *

**Jeremiah Cleans House.**

If not for the death of his parents, Bruce might not have become the Batman.

If not for the loss of her legs, Barbara Gordon might not have become Oracle.

One of his most invaluable assets in the war, she wasn't always confined to a wheelchair. Once she could walk. She was young. And beautiful. Full of life and optimism in a way Gotham itself.

Wasn't.

When she got older she became Batgirl. And she became even more useful in the war. Together with The Batman, she fought the Cavalier, and stopped the Killer Moth in his tracks. She fell in love with Dick Grayson. And with Gotham. And with Batman.

Maybe, more than anyone else, she understood his mission. Being an academic she even made its necessity into a working theory about order, chaos, her and Batman and Robin standing on the threshold between the two and doing their best to stem the tide.

She had a great run. A magnificent career.

Then.

The Joker came.

The son of a bitch who put a bullet through her spine, just to prove an insane point to the Batman and Jim Gordon.

And he failed.

She lived. Gordon didn't go insane. And the Batman put the Joker back in prison. Again.

But. Before all that. Before the dark times, before Batgirl, she was just Jim Gordon's daughter.

And during that time, one Halloween when the Batman was seen to be chasing the Scarecrow one hour and the Penguin the next, a sick man named Jervis Tetch kidnapped her and drugged her.

Oh, Batman saved her. Like always.

But Tetch never forgot the insult. His Alice had been taken from him.

Born out of childish need, he determined to take her back.

It took him years. But he got her. Not on his own, because he could never do anything on his own. First and foremost he was a failure in life and in crime. Which meant whatever crimes he tried to eke out were pointless. Simple. Stupid and violent. Blindly harmful.

And it's the simplest freedom story of all, how Tetch got out of Arkham and found himself free enough to hunt down an old score.

Doctor Jeremiah Arkham had made the facility whole again. He fired the old staff summarily, en masse one day. Called them into Amadeus Arkham's old office in the Mansion, the ancient fireplace burning brightly in the gloom, the oil painting of Elizabeth Arkham staring at terrified orderlies from a gilded frame. He handed them their pink slips one by one and told them the days of their own little Teapot Domes were done.

It was actually because of an intern.

Arkham, you see, was tall and gaunt. Messy grey hair on a strained body, glasses dangling from his nose. One of the interns once confused him with Crane, and as a result found himself in need of a new doctoral programme. Not Arkham's finest moment but he could hardly be seen to be running a sound, or revamped, campus if his interns were confusing their administrator with their bogeyman.

Hence the current mission. Tear down what was. So you could create what would be.

So he steadied himself. And spent what was left of his family fortune, insane old Amadeus' last bonanza, to refurbish the Asylum.

And he told the incoming staff this:

"I will tell you all what I once told the Batman. Quackery has no place within these walls. No longer do we tolerate a lenient hand, or the slippery slope on which lives nepotism and declining standards. You are here because you come highly recommended. Because you were the tops of your classes. This in turn tells me you did not waste your time with foolishness, and the pursuit of destructive habits. So. I promise you this. Today is zero year. For all of you, for me, for Doctors Nybakken and Bartholomew, and for this facility. These are not the days of Doctor Cavendish, I'm pleased to say. Toolery, exploitative behaviors and hucksterism are grounds for prompt dismissal. I will not drag my family's name down anymore than this city has already. And you all will not transform into the likes of Simpson Flanders, may he rest in peace.

"We are here to help those who cannot help themselves. To create a peaceful and meaningful atmosphere which promotes the very best aid the mental health profession can offer. Now. With that, it's an honor to hereby rename this facility: the Elizabeth Arkham Home for the Emotionally Troubled."

That was day one. Zero Year, as he kept calling it. Of the old regime, he retained only Scott Nybakken and Timothy Bartholomew.

Five years. Long time to rebuild.

And the process worked to great effect. If for no other reason than the previous so called 'special interest' cases became non-factors only weeks after Arkham's dismissals. Pamela Isley retreated to Robinson Park as she'd done during the No Man's Land, and even the illustrious Mayor Garcia was persuaded not to touch her.

Live and Let Live, said Vicki Vale and the _Gazette_.

Drop The Issue, said _Living Monthly_.

Forget About Her, said Engel and the GCN pundits.

So Garcia did.

And Arkham moved on.

The city did too.

Killer Croc had been captured on Moldoff, remanded to Waller and DEO, and never heard from again.

And the rest, well, they faded. They faded away so fast and so far that by the time the facility had only two patients to its name, they could be said not to exist at all. In any practical form.

Except for Jervis Tetch, sitting quietly in his cell with copies of _Seventeen_ and _Tiger Beat_ to satiate his paraphilias-and Harvey Dent, alone in the old Penitentiary, staring at an old Dungeons and Dragons dice like he didn't know what to do with it-

The facility was mostly empty.

And as for Nybakken? He never admitted it to anyone but Jeremiah, but-

He feared the Joker.

The clown had escaped years before without so much as a peep. Days later still there had been no threats to the city. Nothing to indicate escape or even, Nybakken eventually claimed, survival.

"Here's what keeps me up at night, Jere."

"Okay?"

"He's here. Still, I mean. Hiding in the treatment plant or the old sewers, where Sharp used to keep Jones."

Arkham smiled a bit. "The old regime, Scott."

"Smile all you like," Nybakken said. "But I sincerely doubt the Joker ever really escaped this island."

Arkham said he'd take it under advisement. That he'd talk to Gordon and Bullock and see what could be done. "With the understanding, Scott," he said, "that probably no one will find out anything."

"I think it's important."

Arkham regarded him. And simply said, "Alright."

And that was that.

"Now what else is on your mind?"

"The Wright stuff," Nybakken said and cracked a smile at his own joke.

"Oh right, uh, Luthor's client," Arkham said. "How's he coming?"

"Surprisingly open," Nybakken said. "He's had such a tough life, you know, normally these types are inaccessible. It's tremendously interesting to me to see how and why he's open about it."

"Hiding in the light is a popular method," Arkham said. "Most cases tend toward Pollyanna. Outwardly agreeable but still tortured. Is he veering to the personal or the professional?"

"So far personal. Keeps bringing up a boy he used to know at university."

"Latency?"

"About the boy, definitely."

"About Luthor?"

Nybakken shook his head. "It's mentor-student for Jesse. His history with this boy he knew is deeper pathology."

Arkham nodded. "Any conclusions?"

"Nothing publishable yet," Nybakken said. "At the very least, it's two realms. He hates and loves him. Proportionally."

"Keep me posted," he said. "Sounds fascinating."

"I will."

Nybakken left Arkham's office. Strolled down the hall. Through the ward and its single occupied cell.

Tetch.

When Nybakken crossed his periphery, Tetch spoke up. Looked up from his UNO cards with a narrow leer.

"Your patient in the city, Doctor Scott? I do wonder what he's got."

Nybakken stopped and looked sideways at Tetch. "Decided to interact today, eh?"

Tetch kept the grin. "Your little boy of blackened hair is he, wonder you what he thinks of thee? Speaking plainly as a cow, back to Lex his report flies now."

Nybakken produced his mobile and dialed the orderly. In the interim he got close to the glass wall separating him from Tetch.

He spoke and belied his own fear. For Tetch to know about events on the outside-

"And you're close to Fifth Avenue yourself?"

"Aye a fraternity's well and true," Tetch said. "When life hands you lemons it's Greek letters to see you through."

Nybakken breathed.

"Whatever you think you know-"

Tetch launched from his chair. Matched Nybakken's pose.

"I'll tell you all I know. There's little to relate. Your kingdom you think safe, is under eye from Irving's schoolmate."

Nybakken frowned.

"Now, now, very now," Tetch said. "The god of fear is in the city of Law, returning, returning, to join your flaw."

Then he dropped the rhyme. And his voice. He barked and grinned and spit on the glass. Howled and cackled and fell to the floor, tickled at his own magnificence. Not quite a mad dog, Nybakken thought. But getting up there, getting up there.

"You're all going to die," Tetch said and Nybakken was fleeing down the hall, shaken and surprised at his own weakness. "You hear me, Doctor Scott?! The end is nigh!"

When Nybakken was gone from the ward, only Tetch and his echoing madness remained.

* * *

**_Continued..._**


	3. I Think You Should Kill It

**_"I think you should kill it..."_**

* * *

You could stop this.

You could stop this anytime you wanted.

This kept me up at night. Tossing and turning across a King mattress, stretching everywhere, frustrated and sweating, stressed and edgy, Gotham in the throes of Indian Summer. Ripe and invasive, infuriated citizenry waiting desperately for it to break so they can get on with October like the rest of Kane County.

I hated it.

Lying under silk sheets I didn't buy, in a house I didn't own.

Living someone else's life.

It was Bart who first suggested all this to me. Bart Allen.

He was, once upon a time, the Kid Flash. His mentor, Wally West, was the Flash after Barry Allen died saving the universe. Barry Allen was Bart's grandfather, who had created the people who would create Bart while on retirement in the future. The thirtieth century, or something like it.

Family.

That's what was important to Bart. And to Barry when he was still around. And to Wally, so lately robbed or so we all heard, of his unborn children. Robbed by a psychotic in a yellow suit trying to make him better.

Family.

I keep coming back to this.

Maybe because I have none. My father dead, my mother long dead.

I have Bruce. And Dick. And Alfred.

But it's not the same.

Bruce took me in after my father was killed. Adopted me. Gave me access to the endless Wayne wealth. Trusted me.

Dick is a soldier, and my brother. But not really. He's already so far away in Blüdhaven that he's functionally not part of the family anymore as it is. He's got his own thing going on. He helps when he's needed but. But. It's not the same.

And Alfred. The grandfather none of us had, curing us. Cuts and scrapes aren't the biggest wounds and not necessarily the most painful, you know. Life gets to everyone, the very strong and the very weak, and it hurts where it can.

All of these people are in my life. And they're doing wonderful things. But they're not family. They are and they aren't.

I don't know anymore. After No Man's Land. After what Elliot did to Selina. The Joker escaping.

After Conner.

I don't have the answers anymore.

If I ever did.

I can't tell you how horrible that makes me feel. These people took me in. When there was nowhere else to go. Because that's what you do when someone needs help.

That's just the sort of people they are.

I've been.

Flying out to Keystone to see Bart. A lot lately. He's mostly given up the Kid Flash role, same as Wally has moved on from being The Flash. These days Bart's got a band, nothing to boast of, but creative and lucrative and the perfect outlet for his natural peacock tendencies. Because you see, he's a showman at heart. Before he's anything else, Bart Allen is a people person.

The thing about why this all started:

It all started with an idea.

That. You didn't need Gotham so much. Anymore.

Maybe.

And so when Bart messages me on the old Titan frequencies that haven't worked since.

Since Conner.

When Bart messages and says what's going on Tim what are you up to tonight there's a new club you wanna try out I got my Fender back from Loches let's hit it up free drinks no cover plus you know the guy playing let's go come on.

The thing about this:

It's all contextual.

Crime had, maybe not so inexplicably, died down in Gotham after the Joker's last great escape. And after that, few weeks at best, came Tetch bursting into the Clock Tower with a Colt Python and putting twelve slugs into Barbara.

It was gruesome.

Next day, The Gazette ran a full page spread of the crime scene, tipped off and paid off by Corrigan no doubt. Barbara's body laying there bloody and gory. A five by seven of the commissioner staring at the scene and looking like a lost little boy.

We got there too late.

She had already bled out.

Tetch was on his knees crying and laughing.

Bruce broke his hands. His legs.

I remember that too, Allen. It was all so mechanical.

Bruce, stop.

And he shouts Never! Never again! Too far!

And he pulls up a fist and he's ready to make Tetch into an obituary.

Bruce.

I call him Bruce, and he looks at me like a lion over a kill and he says You're Calling Me That? In Front of Him?

He's a sick old man, I tell him, he doesn't matter.

He Killed Barbara!

And killing him doesn't change it.

Too Far, he says and now he's throttling Tetch and Tetch is squirming and choking under him. Too Far.

Then leave him be. Let's take him to Gordon. It's out of our hands please. And he doesn't respond and then I'm actually begging him.

I take off the domino mask.

"Bruce."

He looks back at me. Over one shoulder. Still bestial.

"Tim," he says.

"Don't you remember," I tell him and I'm crying as much over Barbara as over life itself, "don't you remember what I told you. All those years ago." And I sigh and wipe some tears and I say.

I say.

"Batman needs Robin.

"He needs him, to remember what he used to be."

He looks back at Tetch and Tetch's eyes are stuck on him. Terrified. Every synonym there is for that.

He stands. Hoists Tetch over one shoulder, fireman style, and says Let's Go.

We take Tetch straight to Central, to the squad room, the MCU. Batman throws him into the center of the bullpen and the night shift, confused, just stares at us.

Batman says, "Tell them what you did."

Tetch stops, weeping, and looks at Batman.

Batman grabs him by the hair and barks.

"Do it!"

Tetch sighs and gulps and speaks and his voice is shattered glass.

"I'm Jervi-ah, Jervis-Tetch I killed-I just killed Barbara Gordon-I'll kill again arrest me now before he gets me oh god oh God no-I never I wasn't he put me up to it I oh god-"

Then he loses it. Breaks into a million pieces, a weeping mess there in the middle of the squad room.

We leave before Gordon comes out. Before Batman feels the need to explain what happened.

We watch from across the street, atop the Lacey Towers building, as Montoya and Bullock eventually escort Tetch to a squad car. Down the street. Out of all our lives.

And Batman turns away and says, "Home."

It was days before we spoke to each other, or to Alfred. You could take a chainsaw to the tension.

Alfred made the phone calls. First to Dick in Blüdhaven. "Arrangements pending," he said, "but if I were you I would make all efforts to get here soon, young Master. I think none of us wants to be alone with his thoughts right now."

So Dick did. He was up by the afternoon.

Few days after, Helena came out to the Manor with flowers and apologies. She and Barbara had been on the outs, I guess was the word for it, during the No Man's Land. They disliked each other. Intensely. But, she said, all that's passed now.

"Yeah," I told her.

She asked if Bruce was in and taking visitors. I told her no. I didn't tell her that I hadn't seen him in days either and was terrified to go into the Cave. Terrified to see what he was doing.

Helena frowned and then caught herself. Put on a brave face and a polite smile and said, "Okay. Will you tell him, Tim. From me. Just, uh. Tell him I'm sorry. For everything."

She hugged me. And then she was gone.

I stayed at the front doors for a while, watching her Harley weave it's way down the drive and back to the City.

Dick came out a moment later and patted my shoulder.

We watched her until the tree-line blocked her from us, half a mile down the lane.

"She's gonna be okay," he said. "She's a fighter."

I looked at him.

"What about you?"

He looked at me and smiled. That gee-whiz, seen it all, carny smile. "I'm always alright."

I nodded and went back in.

Downstairs. To the cave.

You've never been there, Allen, so I'll try to describe it to you.

The steps circling down into it from the library entrance, the grandfather clock, are stone. Native limestone and so easily hewed out, or so Bruce told me long ago and far away. They're also permanently damp and kind of mudded over. You walk down and the steps are stony and wet and you might slip and fall, and then you hear a crashing far off but it's only the waterfall, and there are utility lights everywhere but even so they don't really light up the place so well.

And then. You're there. Here. The cave is impossibly huge, blackness on blackness stretching out forever in every direction. Stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, a constant chill breeze soaking you to your bones. Bats chirping and flying all around you. This isn't a place to leave your coat, it's a place to leave.

But we're here.

He is here.

And in the middle of all this is a giant computer, hopelessly, hilariously large and black, and a man sitting there staring at ten screens at once, six of them are just news feeds, GCN, WLEX, GNN, The Nightly Show, Fox, CNN. One is video loop surveillance on Jervis Tetch, currently in holding at the Robert Schreck Tri-County Penitentiary. Another is video loop on Central and Gordon's office. Another is Garcia's office in City Hall.

Bruce was working through the remaining one. A black screen, full of command lines that were names of people we knew. I saw Corrigan's name and Montoya's and Bullock's. Gordon. Doctor Arkham.

I slowed down. Approached him slowly. I was afraid. I remember.

"Helena was by."

Nothing.

"She brought flowers. And. She says she's sorry."

Nothing.

"The funeral's tomorrow," I said. "Are you going?"

Nothing.

"So we're not going to talk about this. At all."

"Someone got Tetch out of Arkham. I want to know who. Security records say Bruce Wayne saw him last week but I haven't been there since before the Joker escaped. Get your suit on. I want to see Jeremiah Arkham. And I want to know who's wearing my face."

He stood and headed for the suit vault.

I stayed still.

He looked at me.

"What?"

I looked around. Sighed.

"What is the point? Go beat up Arkham because he might know something? Feel better about ourselves?"

His eyes stayed on me. "Something like that. Let's go."

I said no. "Bruce. It's Barbara. Come on."

"Barbara was a soldier. This is what she would've wanted."

"Maybe. But you're not interested in remembering Barbara, or honoring her memory. You just want to fuck someone up, you're so damaged."

"That's an exaggeration!"

"God, Bruce, don't you get it? Look what happened! Barbara! Deserves! More!"

"She believed in the mission," he said. "Like you."

"Bullshit. She loved you."

He shook his head and made for the vault. Called back to me: "Are you coming or not?"

I said no.

He pivoted in place. He was angry, I could tell, but he had a masterful way of containing it. So you never really knew just how enraged he could be.

I shook my head.

"I don't know who you are anymore."

And I turned and went up the stairs.

He called after me, asking where I was going.

Nowhere, I said. Looks like I'm going nowhere.

As it turned out I went to the garage. Took the Elise and left.

I just left.

For Keystone. For Bart. And something...something else. Something different.

And sitting in The Lichfield Club on the river, two whiskey sours deep and watching Bart down there headlining some open mike night folk band Coldplay covers-

I told him all this. After his set, when he came up to the balcony seating and plopped down and started in with the fifth degree.

"Well," he said when I was all done. "I think you shot yourself in the foot Tim but it's okay because you know what you have another foot okay so I think you should apologize but I also think he was wrong too you know its a group failure do you find that most failures are group failures?"

I told him yes.

He nodded fast and smiled and toasted me. "Thanks for coming out Tim you're a good friend."

"You too," I said.

I looked at him.

He had been going so fast and so long that now, sitting here he blurred in place. He was tapped into his Speed Force even subconsciously. All the time. I looked at him and breathed.

He must've known something was up because he slowed down then. Came into a single vision. Slowed.

And breathed.

"So where do you go from here," he said. "I mean it sounded like a pretty cut and dry, you know, dissolution."

"I don't know. Figure out my situation, I guess."

"You've been kind of thinking of leaving Gotham for a while now. Why not pull the trigger?"

"Because you can't just up sticks and go, Bart. I have roots there. Bruce is there. Alfred is there."

"But they're why you're leaving. Aren't they? Can I venture an opinion?"

"Sure."

"You've got this beast growing inside. Anger and sadness and depression, which is like anger just on sedatives, you know, and it's killing you. You could-Tim...I don't know how you do it. But all these things that are happening. Or. Have happened. They're just building up. Turning you into this monster. So. You want to know what I think you should do? To this big green rage monster?"

"What?"

He leant across the table. Put both hands on either side of my face. Got close, pressed his forehead to mine.

He said, "I think you should kill it."

We looked at each other.

"Then it's dead and you bury it. Busy life, keep swimming. You've been trying to get out for a while. Here's the chance."

"What if it's a mistake?"

"Then make the jump, Tim. Make the mistake."

I waited.

Finally I said, "I don't know how."

He sighed. Kissed my forehead and sat back.

"I wish you could be happy, Tim. There are ways. You can come out here to live. Aunt Iris said so. We can protect the Cities. New Titans or whatever. Or we can just live. You know. Together. You don't need this."

Silence still. Seemed like years. After it all I spoke. Quiet and withdrawn. Defeated.

"I was upset," I said. "For a long time. Over a lot of things. And they're just gone, Bart. I feel like I'm blind. Driving down a road at night and I can't even see the next turn."

Bart made a face.

"You know," he said. "We both turned twenty one this year. Can I just, uh...it's weird for me because. I'm twenty one years old. Centuries before I'll even be born, Tim. Heh. I had this. Theory once. That I'd use the treadmill to jump ahead. You know. Jump ahead and watch myself being born. It's like a self-actualising exercise. See where I came from. To maybe see where I'm going."

"You ever do it?"

He shook his head, overacted, and said, "Heck no. Thing is, Tim, whenever I get nostalgic like that I like to, like, look around and see what I have here. Things the thirtieth century doesn't have. For whatever reason. You know, it's. It's simpler here. It's quieter."

"But your time is still coming," I said.

He smiled. "You don't watch a lot of sci-fi, do you, Tim?"

"Hey," I said and smiled. "I discovered Heinlein at a young age. Sci-fi is doing me just fine."

"Okay," he said. "Anyway. I was heading for a Doctor Who reference. You know. Time bring rewritten. All that stuff."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Anyway."

Bart made a face. "_Number of the Beast_, though, what the hell was that?"

"Oh my god, I know right? So weird."

"You ever read _The Door Into Summer_?"

"Nah, _Double Star_ is my jam. That or the _Moon_."

"Too rich for my blood. You ever read Haldeman?"

Together: "_Forever War_!"

And we laughed.

And I started to feel better about myself.

"Oh," Bart said. "I'm glad you came out, Tim."

"Me too."

"So," he said and finished off his sour. "What are you gonna do?"

"Go back, I guess. Apologise for being an asshole."

Bart nodded. "You skipped town because he pissed you off so badly. And that means you missed the funeral too. Am I right?"

I was silent. Staring at the cherry still floating there in my sour. "Yeah. I was."

"Angry," he said. "It's okay."

But it wasn't. I finished the drink and got up. Walked to the bar and ordered another.

Bart sidled up next to me, leaning against the bar so he could stare out at the room and the throng.

He was quiet when he spoke. Looking at his phone and the crowd and thinking. He was never this quiet.

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure," I said. The bartender brought the replacement sour and and I finished it in one go.

"Is this what he does to you Robins? Makes you. Like this?"

I was silent. I stared at the bar and the shelves in the wall. The mirror behind all the booze. Across the room, on the stage, another skinny scenester took stage, started into a Pet Shop Boys cover.

Tell him the truth, Tim. Tell him how you started out years ago with hope and nobility. Saving the world alongside the Batman and saving him from the worse angels of his nature. Save the Batman and in so doing save Gotham.

You were going to be so much more.

"Yes," I said. "Dick got tired and moved on. Jason-had an unhappy life anyway. Then of course he died."

Another pause. The band moved from Neil Tennant to a guy on an acoustic, butchering Wish You Were Here.

"Whose life are you living, Tim? Who is this Tim Drake? Marching to Bruce Wayne's beat. No one I know."

I looked at him. And looked away.

"I don't know what's going to happen, Bart. Bruce will never admit it, but seeing the Riddler die really shook him. He's still messed up over what Elliot did to Selina. And no one knows where the Joker is. And now all this with Tetch and Barbara. I'm worried he's heading down a dark path."

Bart thought about it. "And you don't think Robin can save him from this one."

"I'm worried," I said. "That he doesn't want to be saved."

* * *

**Years Ago.**

**Thomas and The Family.**

Elliot was accomplished. And what was more, he knew it. Relished it. He had everything he could ever want. Anyone could ever want.

And more.

And it wasn't enough.

His father, the alcoholic wastrel drinking his days and the ancestral Elliot fortune away, obsessed over The Way Things Used To Be, his carefree youth spent in a kinder gentler Gotham where the sun would actually shine.

His mother, the uptight skinflint who came from nothing and so remained with Roger the Tyrant because she'd irrationally determined that she could use his money to build a certain comfortable life, and to milk him dry. Secondarily, to provide an opportunity for Thomas, to become more than his own father ever would. Or could.

The best home. The best clothes. The best education.

And all of these things, feeding the psyche of a boy too embittered and too righteous to care. He didn't want their money, their wholly undeserved reputation, The Elliots, the Very Model of Distinguished Old Money Not Like Those Waynes.

Frivolously wasting their fortunes on social improvement. Ha.

Thomas was six when he first heard of Thomas Wayne's plan to revitalise the failing city. Through grants and loans and new programmes meant to inspire even the least among human society.

Six years old. Watching the television and thinking, This Fool is Terribly Deluded.

Two years later Thomas had met Bruce at school. And then he'd met Thomas, heard all about the cause célèbre. He still determined to fixate on the Wayne family and his best friend Bruce, as the focus of his irrational dislike.

For.

Everyone.

Old money. Ha.

The Elliot family. Ha.

Old as time. Old as Gotham. Old as dirt. His great grandfather, Lincoln Elliot, had been Mayor once. The Elliot side of the family had the money. Mother's side, the March family, had.

Something. Maybe nothing.

He found out years later why she had been so pathologically terrified of losing money. Terrified that on the occasion of her abusive husband's death by physics-a car accident, and a telephone pole to the face-The March family had also been in Gotham since before there was a Gotham. They controlled, or so Elliot's conspiracy nuts at the Hall of Records believed, a secret society that had run Gotham since the fire and the wheel. His mother had been part of it.

And then she wasn't.

Excommunicated. Forcibly divested of all access to the endless March family coffers and their society.

And so. Mother had nothing. Except her pearls, her beloved cherrywood jewellery box with gewgaws from time untold locked in it. And her disapproval.

Of everything he did. Everything he was.

Eight years old.

The next determination was to wipe them out. Mother and Father. The biddy and the drunk.

After that, Peyton Reilly. The mob daughter. Sociopathic. In love with Thomas and willing to follow him anywhere.

After that, med school.

Then scheming with Crane and Nigma to destroy Bruce.

And Dent.

And failure.

And then, other things happened.

Made a fool of by the Joker. Left to die by the Batman.

And then. One day.

He got even.

Aristotle tells us A is A. Elliot spent years formulating this into a suitable personal revenge philosophy: if A was A, then life was an eye for an eye. This for that. That because of this. Equanimity in a hostile environment. All things being the same.

He felt really rather good about it. Striking at Bruce because of a promise fallen through: he had sworn one thing, and reality delivered another.

Mother had clung to life

Not Bruce's fault. Not really.

But Elliot also clung to life. And to rage. That impossible emotion strangling the grief.

Until Bruce.

And Mother.

And Peyton.

Were poison in his veins.

And so his anger was all he had left. It had governed his life ever since then. Ever since Bruce swore.

_Hey Tommy they'll be okay._

You promise?

_Promise. Stick a needle._

She lived.

Promise broken.

As it turned out, hopelessly, hilariously, Bruce Wayne spent the rest of his life breaking promises.

And so after the last great fight, after Elliot had successfully removed the Cat, Selina Kyle, from Bruce's life-

After Elliot spent months recuperating and getting his house back in order-

After he killed seventy four vagrants in Crime Alley alone just to harvest the best features from all in order to restore his face to a perfect surgical simulacrum of Bruce Wayne's-

After he heard the Riddler was dying again-

After he heard the Joker had gone off the radar-

Thomas Elliot decided that enough was enough.

He smiled.

And fixed his face.

And walked into Arkham Asylum dressed like Bruce, looking like Bruce, speaking in Bruce's easy and free baritone.

He went to see one of the facility's last remaining inmates, the genuinely ill Jervis Tetch, once the sometimes-legendary Mad Hatter and now just a shell of a man and so much more interesting, Elliot had to admit, for it.

He walked up to Tetch's cell.

And said, "It's time."

* * *

_**Continued...**_


End file.
